Four priceless Torah scrolls from the National Library of Israel’s world-leading Judaica collection will be on display in a series of video clips over the Shavuot holiday.
The Torah scrolls – which are generally unavailable for public viewing and in delicate condition – were brought out from the NLI vaults for a few minutes to be filmed and photographed, with approval and supervision from conservation experts.
The scrolls will be featured on the NLI’s Facebook and Twitter, as a well as on their blog and in a dedicated YouTube playlist.
The featured items include fragments from a 1,000 year-old Yemenite Torah scroll – as well as one of the world’s smallest legible Torah scrolls, measuring just 6 centimeters (2 1/3 inches) in height.
Rhodes Torah
Another scroll that will be shown is the Rhodes Torah, which scholars believe to have been written in Iberia in the 15th Century and brought to Rhodes by Sephardic refugees. The scroll was used for hundreds of years in the Kahal Shalom Synagogue, now the oldest synagogue in Greece.
Just a few days before the Nazis deported nearly all of Rhodes’ Jews in 1944, the scroll was smuggled out and placed in the custody of the local mufti, Sheikh Suleyman Kasiloglou. The mufti hid the Torah under the pulpit of a local mosque. Thanks to his actions, the scroll subsequently survived the war, even though the vast majority of the Rhodes Jewish community did not.
Saul Wahl scroll
The final scroll to be featured in the series was believed to have been owned by Saul Wahl, a prominent Polish Jewish merchant and adviser to royalty who, according to legend, served as King of Poland for just one day in the late 16th century.
The Saul Wahl Torah features staves made of ivory and horns, and is decorated with silver. It also comes with its own miniature holy ark, featuring a door made from a 17th-century Torah shield.